


destroy everything you touch

by mcmotzkin



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, No Plot/Plotless, Vague Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 04:30:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7028692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmotzkin/pseuds/mcmotzkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is Karen Page after - well, After.</p>
            </blockquote>





	destroy everything you touch

**Author's Note:**

> I'm thinking of starting a tag called "No Porn No Plot".  
> Also, I don't know how twitter works, or trauma.

 

The first week after the godawful article was spent on edge, in anticipation of someone calling her on her bullshit. A letter, a look, a shout from a passing car; Karen was so oddly vulnerable right then that if someone shot her down she would probably not have found it in herself to get up, but. It never came.

She wrote it thinking “What would Karen Page want to read?” - Not her in her current state, but the self-righteous, naive, slightly neurotic woman who pushed and searched and demanded until it blew up in her face.

Two weeks later she had been reading that day’s issue, ever the dutiful employee, when a small ad caught her eye:  


 

> _With all due respect, Ma’am-_
> 
> _That was bullshit.  
>    
>  _

-and she’d laughed and almost tore the tiny piece of paper out to keep in her purse for good luck or guidance, but thought better of it. What a foolish, sentimental desire.  
 

Instead she finally wrote the Frank Castle exposé with the title-

 

 

> **_The Punisher: Who Does He Think He Is?_ **

 

-generous with details of his life and tragedy; ending it with,

 

 

> Who _does_ he think he is? - I propose to you he thinks he is a simple man that does what needs to be done so that other simple people, all of us, can wake up safely every morning and read some bullshit article in the newspaper over our favorite brand of coffee. He brings justice where it’s overdue and collects whatever these people owe in blood. It could have been you doing it, or the police, or the court, but it’s not - so it’s him. It’s very simple logic. It’s a very strong conviction. It makes him dangerous, more so than his skill of ending lives.
> 
>  
> 
> Over many months now we’ve seen people in Hell’s Kitchen who have real power, and we’ve seen how they chose to use it; what stories they told themselves. Wilson Fisk thought he was a kindness, the Devil thinks he’s a necessity, and they both love this place with a fierceness that keeps driving them on. Frank Castle thought he was a father, husband, soldier, man - now that the first three no longer apply he is left with very little, and I’m honestly not sure that’s enough to keep him going.
> 
>  
> 
> Sleep well tonight, he doesn’t care either way.

 

Now the letters come. Now she doesn’t care.

 

On Twitter someone asked her

_@KarenPAge What do /you/ think The Punisher is?_

 

She wrote back

_Inertia._

 

-

 

Ben’s office is very carefully maintained like he had it- the only things Karen brings inside are those she can carry back out at the end of her work day; a paper-coffee-cup-shaped thermos, her jacket, her laptop. Her co-workers think it’s sentiment, Ellison think it’s respect.

 

It’s very simply a reminder: _this is not yours_.

 

 

A life of a self-flagellation: her brother’s old clothes in her wardrobe; Ben’s car and office and job; James Wesley’s gun in her handbag.  


If you destroy things they will keep you company. This is the modernized act of eating somebody’s insides to gain their strength; this is fortifying the walls of your house with your enemy’s bones. She is teetering.  


_Missed connections: You were walking a dog in the park with that stupid hat hiding your eyes and the bruises under them. You read my articles. Relaxation suits you._

 

-

 

She meets The Punisher again for the first time like this: the construction site at the Docs where he’d faked his death all those months ago; well-dressed men meeting in shadowy places; surprised eyes on a bruised face. He lost the cap.  
 

Subtle communications.  
 

“What were you looking for?” He’s bloody and wild around the edges with that tick of his trigger finger and that tilt of his head. What a sight for sore eyes.  
 

Frank’s voice is soft in her still ringing ears; maybe he was always meant to be heard with the bell-chime of shots and falling bullet shells in the background. Saint Frank, with his spray-painted shirt, like he’s trying to claim and announce himself all at the same time. _Look at me,_ it says _, I was shot in my goddamn head and here I am; brimstone and fire_.  


Except, _No_ , she shakes her head and grinds her teeth against the intruding thoughts, _he is just a man_. He had also saved her life on more than one occasion, so she supposes “Death.” would not be an appropriate answer.  
 

Instead she says, “A story.”  


She takes him home.

 

He makes her feel like stage fright. Wandering eyes, shaking hands pulling hair back from her face, then letting it fall; uncertain smiles and words tasting of panic that fall from her tongue like river rocks- smooth and heavy and all too willingly provided for him to stone her with.  


Frank is quiet in the passenger seat of the car (not _her_ car, but not Ben’s now either,) all the way to her apartment up until she shuts down the engine and steps out with a softly closed door, “You said-”  
 

“Yes. Well, I’ve been kidnapped and for all I knew I was going to die right there, I just wanted everything to _stop_ , so forgive me for being a little harsh with my words.” She had meant it to sound sarcastic, but she thinks it sounded a bit more sincere than he perhaps deserves.  


He ducks his head a bit like he did in the diner, and she has to turn from him and lead the way to the apartment lest it somehow shows that she had suddenly forgotten the way words work and how the muscles of her arms are tight with _want_.

 

Karen does not clean his wounds or bandages them when he’s done because he’s a grown man and she did not sign up for this shit, but she makes chamomile tea enough for two, brings him hot water, her first-aid kit and her brother’s clothes she thinks might fit and leaves him to tend to himself at the kitchen table.

 

She wakes up at 4:17 in the morning with her laptop open on her chest, stretched on the sofa. Hoping she remembered to save whatever it was she managed to write, she closes the lid properly and relocates under the covers of her bed for just a few more hours. Beside her Frank Castle, unstirred from her movements, sleeps the sleep of the weary. He smells like her mint shampoo.

 

-

 

She meets him again for the second time in an alley, the third time in a grocery store, the fourth time she invites him to stay.  
 

He doesn’t, but he spends enough nights in her bed to make this feel like maybe he did.  
 

So she doesn’t ask; he knocks on her door defeated, victorious, dead-eyed, bone-tired or doesn’t knock at all. She lets him in, doesn’t talk about the bodies and gruesome stories in the papers and all over the police scanners she definitely doesn’t have in both the car and apartment, and doesn’t offer him a key even though she wants to. He probably needs to be able to ask, anyway. One day there will be no one to come back to her, she knows, so she holds him tight at night and lets his hands learn her face.

 

She smiles at Frank and nothing else, skips two meals a day, finds herself staring into space. She feels heavy, like gravity is pulling her through the dirty pavement to the crust of the earth through bits of stone and old bones. Heavy.

 

-

 

Frank Castle is dead. This is the message everyone is supposed to come away with from those grueling weeks she privately calls ‘ _The fall of N &M_’; the man had died and The Punisher was born from his ashes. It must be true for everyone, except- on hot, stifling nights in her apartment a man with a soft voice sits close to Karen on her godawful sofa, her feet tucked under her and knees touching his thigh, and he tells her stories about his daughter. She would not trade these nights for anything. ( he told about his wife as well, but her smile is a little less sincere at these times. she came to understand that Frank’s perception of what love means is.. Difficult.)  
  
Sleep next to Frank is surprisingly quiet; his nightmares don’t wake her, if he has them at all, she does not ask, and her own are soothed by seeing the rise and fall of his chest in the light that streams from the street through the window. It makes everything feel ethereal, and she closes her eyes again almost believing this can last.  
  
Karen keeps tempting fate while doing her job and doesn’t explain to Frank that she is not a pure soul seeking justice despite what her professions might lead people to believe and isn’t like him at all - that she had chased after Fisk’s past because she believed her own should have come to light, that she shuns Matt because she was more comfortable not knowing his secret than she is knowing it, that she advocated for _him_ but was speaking of herself. She doesn’t explain that he is wrong to look at her like she’s the light in the goddamn room because she might go out and leave him disorientated and more vulnerable than before. Who will tell him good night and call him by his name? He is wrong to let her.

 

“You are not a monster.” He is, really. So is she. But what a balm on the heart it is to claim otherwise and see the expression around the monster’s eyes when they realize someone’s in their corner. What a comfort he is to her guilt. What a gift.

 

-

 

 _Destroy things and they will keep you company_. She thinks - Frank Castle is pretty good at destroying himself without her involvement, so maybe there’s no danger this time.

Still, she finds herself thinking of something of his she can have,  
After.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not very satisfied with this but I've been 'writing' it since I finished the series and I just want it off my chest.


End file.
